Vice Adm. William McRaven recently explained to the Senate Armed Services Committee that, actually, special-ops ‘night raids’ are rather gentle:
Night raids have drawn the ire of President Hamid Karzai for their intrusiveness and the civilian casualties they’ve caused. (One of them prompted McRaven to deliver two sheep to an Afghan family as recompense.) But according to McRaven, they’re far from the shoot-’em-ups that the media portrays.
McRaven’s team has conducted over 1700 night raids in the past year alone, he disclosed. Of those, McRaven said, the vast majority — “approximately 84 to 86 percent” — “never fire a shot.”
“Every operation,” McRaven told the Senate panel in written questions for the record, is accompanied by Afghan troops, who “are always in the lead during entry of compounds and call outs.” Teams of women accompany the raids to “reassure women and children” in Afghan compounds that “everyone is going to be safe.”
Stopping the raids, as Karzai wants, would “certainly be detrimental to the special operations aspect to the fight in Afghanistan,” McRaven said.
Of course, McRaven has every interest in portraying the raids as benign affairs, since they’re the most controversial special operations mission in Afghanistan. His JSOC predecessor, Stanley McChrystal, restricted them during his tenure as Afghanistan commander for fear of alienating civilians.